Categories
The Course of Words

Frey’s fatal flaw

Copyright 2006 Ben S. Pollock A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby. This novel — ingested via a CD set with not one but three narrators portraying the four principal roles — from just last year is a good read. Besides wondering how the characters are getting along now, a week after I finished their […]

Categories
News, Spin

More detail on 3-08-06 post

The fellow killed while walking along the highway was 21-year-old Joseph Erin Hamley. He was not armed. He was retarded and had cerebral palsy. His mother said he put his hands in his pockets when nervous. Adam Lee Leadford, 18, was armed only with a can of pepper spray when he was wounded, according to […]

Categories
News, Spin

Safe to walk the streets

Northwest Arkansas can rest easily. But, no, it isn’t a good idea to walk around. Area law enforcement got the word that a prison escapee from Michigan might be in the area. Adam Lee Leadford, 18, got out of one of those boot camps for relatively young, relatively nondangerous offenders. Leadford last April (so he […]

Categories
Education, Coarsely

Milk fails the Pepsi Challenge

We in Arkansas are proud of our governor, Mike Huckabee. It’ll be a shame to lose him to term limits in 2 1/2 years, as he has grown in office even in the eyes of progressive sorts. He went from being a rigid Republican and a member of the evangelical right — he’s an ordained […]

Categories
The Course of Words

Vonnegut back on top

Copyright 2006 Ben S. Pollock Today’s title is A Man Without a Country, by Kurt Vonnegut, 2005, Seven Stories Press. I got through this volume’s 146 pages in only a part of an evening. I read the sections willy-nilly, and I didn’t care (quite unlike my habit). It didn’t matter, although the essays and sketches […]

Categories
American Culture

Epiphany No. 1, in B-flat Major

What does it mean when video rental stores charge $2.49 to $4-something for a movie just released to DVD when for double that (or so) you can own a slightly older DVD? In other words, a new release as compared to what’s showing in the dollar house. Economically, this means you are willing to pay […]